Flexible, coordinated and smart operation of infrastructure in the UK is essential for integrating the high volumes of renewable and inflexible low-carbon power onto the grid. This infrastructure will become doubly important as the country continues to decarbonise (and electrify) heat, and increasingly turn to electric vehicles.
Research will focus on achieving the provision of coordinated flexibility. It will explore the pathway to help the transport and electricity sectors to evolve together, and evaluate the potential of integrating multi-energy storage to help provide large-capacity long-duration energy storage (LLES) for ensuring a reliable energy supply throughout the year.
The core programme is focused on the economic and engineering factors that will determine our energy system’s success. Working closely with other research activities, UKERC will be bringing in new partners to explore customer engagement with flexibility providers, and assess the environmental impacts of LLES technologies.
This study addresses the pressure to build workplace charging facilities by presenting a mathematical optimisation model, available via an open-source web application, that empowers business executives to manage energy consumption effectively, enabling them to assess peak loads, charging costs and carbon emissions specific to their power profiles and employee needs.
The policy brief calls on government to ensure that electricity networks are strengthened according to new demands, and anticipatory investment is enabled to support industrial decarbonisation. It also recommends that policymakers provide clarity on plans for industrial electrification, while strengthening data on future industrial electricity demand to create an accurate picture of future needs.